There was a time when after a military coup d'état was announced one waited to hear the reactions of foreign heads of state and international organisations. But in recent years these coups have become so frequent in West Africa that one is more likely to be on the lookout for who has the best joke about it.
After Captain Ibrahim Traoré seized power in Burkina Faso on Friday September 30th, the Nigerian humorist Mamane ironically noted that 'Gondwana' – the imaginary country he has created which is a satire on autocratic Africa regimes – was not just an exporter of raw materials such as oil, cobalt, coltan and diamonds but had also become the “leading world producer of strongmen'”.
Meanwhile the Congolese newspaper cartoonist Kash depicted a young Congolese woman telling her parents about her plans to marry a “soldier from Mali or Burkina Faso” because of the increased chance this will give her of becoming “First Lady in these countries”.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
The high turnover rate of leaders in some West African states in recent years is indeed startling. The facts tell their own story: the president of Mali Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta was ousted by a military junta on August 18th 2020; his successor Bah N’Daw was then deposed less than a year later, on May 24th, 2021; the president of Guinea, Alpha Condé, was removed from office, again by the military, on September 5th 2021; the president of Burkina Faso, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, was ousted by a coup on January 24th 2022; and then on September 30th 2022, his successor Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba was himself forced to stand down.
How is one to make sense of these repeated coups in the region? It is still too soon to know all the the details of exactly how they happened – and why. However, four lessons already appear clear.
Lesson number 1: Failings in the 'war against terrorism' in the Sahel region
Coups d’état are not unprecedented in these countries since independence. In total, Burkina Faso has seen eight (1966, 1980, 1982, 1983, 1987, 2014, January 2022, September 2022), Mali five (1968, 1991, 2012, 2020 and 2021) and Guinea three (in 1984, 2008 and 2021).
But the fours putsches that have occurred in Mali and Burkina Faso in recent years seem to have one common factor, something new compared with those in the 1980s: their link to the catastrophic security situation in those countries.
In both Mali and Bukina Faso large swathes of the country are under the control of armed jihadist groups, hundreds of thousands of people have had to flee their homes (according to non-governmental organisations nearly two million people have been displaced internally in Burkina Faso and more than 300,000 in Mali), and attacks regularly target civilians as well as military and United Nations bases.
In their first public pronouncements after seizing power the junta in Mali (the 'Committee for the Salvation of the People' or CNSP) and the junta in Burkina Faso (the 'Patriotic Movement for Safeguard and Restoration' or MPSR) said that they had carried out the coups to bring an end this insecurity. “Day by day our country, Mali, is sinking into chaos, anarchy, and insecurity mostly due to the fault of the people who are in charge of its destiny,” the CNSP said in its first post-coup declaration. Meanwhile the president of the MPSR said they had acted because of the “deteriorating security situation” and the “obvious inability of the government … to unite the people of Burkina Faso to confront this situation effectively”.
The coup organised by the MPSR was carried out two months after the November 14th 2021 attack at Inata in the north of Burkina Faso in which more than 50 gendarmes were killed by jihadist fighters. That incident came four years after another massacre that also sparked huge emotional reaction in the country; the attack by jihadists on a convoy at Gaskindé in the north of Burkina in which 37 people, including 27 soldiers, died.
These coups are in fact, largely carried out by men on the ground – there are scarcely any women in the two juntas - who have become frustrated by their leaders' failures, whether politicians or senior officers. They accuse these leaders of not doing enough to tackle the security crisis. According to Amandine Gnanguênon, research fellow at United Nations university UNU-CRIS, this anger at the failures of the “war on terrorism” comes on top of a more widespread feeling among the military that they are under-appreciated. “You have to understand the frustration of the soldiers on the ground, who lack the means of communication to call for reinforcements when they are attacked, who lack ammunition and equipment … this frustration is very strong - the feeling of being disparaged from all quarters, of a lack of recognition of their profession and of their sacrifices, remains very strong,” she says.
The coups have also often been accompanied by demands for better conditions. In Bukina Faso, for example, the junta that seized power in January had started by demanding the “appropriate resources for the fight and significant troop numbers” and more money for the soldiers (see this article in Le Monde).
Lesson number 2: classic power struggles
However, the security situation and the frustration felt by some soldiers are not the only factors behind the coups. They are also the result of classic power struggles. The “second coups” or the “coups within a coup” that have recently occurred in Burkina Faso and Mali are evidence of this. Both have their origins in rivalries and dissent within the military juntas themselves.
In Mali, Bah N'Daw, a former pilot in the Malian army who was appointed transitional president after the coup in August 2020, was himself deposed by a new putsch in May 2021. The person who ousted him was Assimi Goïta, who was involved in the overthrow of the government the previous year and who had objected to N'Daw sidelining two of his allies.
In Burkina Faso Lieutenant-Colonel Damiba, who came to power in January 2022, was recently overthrown by a captain, Ibrahim Traoré, who had also been part of the original coup. Traoré's men had apparently been angry at rumours of bonuses and villas being given by Damiba to soldiers from the country's special forces unit (see this article by Jeune Afrique magazine here)
Lesson number 3: the political classes are to a great extent jointly responsible
Civilian politicians are not just collateral victims of this military unrest. In the views of several academics, politicians in Mali, Bukina Faso - and Guinea too – have contributed to the establishment of a political system that encourages coups d'état.
“Since their independence the governments [of these countries] have used the army to attain power or maintain themselves in power,” notes Amandine Gnanguênon. Niagalé Bagayoko, who has a doctorate in international relations and is president of the African Security Sector Network, says: “The military apparatus has been perceived by these leaders not as a tool of public policy but as an instrument to conserve power.”
This misuse of the military has taken taken several forms, she notes: the appropriation or even misappropriation of major budgets paid by international backers in order to “reform” the armed forces (as in Mali), or the use of soldiers to repress social movements (as in Guinea).
The heads of state of these countries have in turn supported some sections of their armies and marginalised others according to their own interests; either to win loyalty or to weaken factions they suspect of wanting to build up their own power base. The risk of doing this is to encourage some groups to feel marginalised, which is fertile ground for coups - and thus to end up achieving the precise opposite of what was intended. Several observers in Guinea note that Lieutenant-Colonel Mamadi Doumbouya decided to carry out his coup after learning that the presidency planned to sideline or even arrest him, as they considered him too dangerous.
The armies also act as if they are responding to public opinion on the grounds that the institutions who should perform this role - as a form of countercheck to the government - have failed to do so.
In Burkina Faso, the authorities thought they had reduced the danger by imprisoning an officer, Emmanuel Zoungrana, who was suspected of wanting to seize power. But the same boomerang effect occurred as seen in Guinea: his supporters helped in the putsch on September 30th by descending into the streets to back the overthrow of the existing junta.
The political classes in West Africa also bear their share of responsibility for having relinquished their role of providing opposition to the government of the day. “The armies also act as if they are responding to public opinion on the grounds that the institutions who should perform this role - as a form of countercheck to the government - have failed to do so,” says Oswald Padonou, lecturer at the École Nationale Supérieure des Armées (ENSA) military school in Benin.
For him, the solution is via more “parliamentary” politics and less “verticality” in government. He notes: “When you don't see the Parliamentary opposition or even ministers shoulder their responsibilities, the head of state in a way becomes the only conduit for discontent.” A handful of soldiers can then quickly topple this lone figure.
Lesson number 4: Russia's role
A number of factors have led to queries over the possible role of Russia in the Burkina Faso coup on September 30th. Russian flags were brandished by some supporters of those who carried out the coup and the event was warmly greeted in a message from Yevgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch close to Vladimir Putin and the founder of the Wagner Group of mercenaries. Off the record, some French military sources have openly discussed this theory. But so far there is little hard evidence to support any such role. Russian flags are currently in fashion on the African continent, coup or no coup, and Yevgeny Prigozhin had also greeted the earlier coup in Burkina Faso with a similarly upbeat message.
But while for the time being it is not possible to demonstrate any Russian intervention in these coups, it is obvious that the growing military, political and economic influence of Moscow on the continent has had an indirect contribution.
In Ouagadougou - the Burkina Faso capital - the overthrow of President Damiba would perhaps not have been achieved without the anger felt by a section of the local population against France. This anger does not require any Russian intervention to exist, but the latter happily keep it going via their networks of disinformation.
Amandine Gnanguênon notes that the mere fact of having Russia or China among their partners accords the authors of the coups a distinctive status. “The heads of state of these states are now no longer just obliged to speak with France, the European Union or Germany,” she says, referring to states and organisation that require that certain democratic principles are respected – even if they do not always apply them themselves. “They talk with – and are listened to by – Russia and others, who help make them feel legitimate. And they really are in control: in the past, it was possible for them to be so but negotiating with France or the EU was quite difficult. The stakeholders with whom they talk today at an economic level no longer have the same rules as in the past,” Amandine Gnanguênon says.
The academic suggests that this new situation might require some “psychological” adjustment on the part of Europe. “The Europeans have to accept that they are no longer the sole players and that the people, regimes and rulers decide with whom they negotiate. Perhaps they don't like it, but that's how it is,” she says.
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter